A peek at my first BSG fic - "The Thirteenth"
Okay, I've done fanfic elsewhere but never for a sci-fi show and never for BSG, so I'm a little nervous about posting this, but I wanted to get feedback on CIC-type and pilot jargon because that stuff sort of intimidates me. I love to read as well as write character-driven fic. I've decided to pick up right where "Crossroads, Part II" left off and with a character POV that I feel has been largely unwritten by the show (but it won't always be with this character). Please be honest and let me know what you think.
Good news: I have about 20 pages of this fic written in rough, very rough form. Bad news: I will be vacationing out of the country for the next two weeks (with probably no computer access) starting tomorrow so I won't be able to post anything new until the end of the month. (But I promise to bring a notebook with me to keep writing.) I am amazed at how much I'm enjoying writing this, but want to make sure I'm going in an okay direction. And if anyone knows of a good beta or would be interested in beta-ing my fic, please let me know.
The title will be explained in a later chapter but you could probably understand to what it's referring.
"The Thirteenth" - Chapter One
“I’ve been to Earth. I know where it is. And I’m going to take us there.”
The CIC grew so quiet you could only hear the whirr of the computers and the beeps of the DRADIS contacts that were multiplying by the second. No one could speak out of both shock and the desire to hear every word that was being spoken. Dualla glanced at Gaeta, who looked as stunned as she felt. She then looked at Adama, who was obviously shaken.
The profound silence was broken up by Starbuck’s voice. “And it looks like I came back just in time. We have two incoming Raiders!”
Gaeta went back to reporting DRADIS contacts while Adama turned to Dualla. “Lieutenant, let me speak directly.”
“Yes, sir.” Dualla patched in the Admiral’s line. “You’re now connected.”
Adama picked up his radio receiver. “Apollo, this is Galactica Actual. Can you confirm that she…do you have a visual on Starbuck?” His voice cracked slightly on her name. Still, there was radio silence. “Lee, please respond.”
They heard that voice again and realized it wasn’t a hallucination they were all sharing. “Galactica, this is Starbuck. Let’s survive this attack first and I’ll explain everything later.” The calm voice then turned ferocious. “Come on, Apollo, wake the frak up or you're dead.”
Dualla watched Adama put his receiver down slowly in disbelief, not making eye contact with anyone. She knew how much Starbuck’s loss had affected him, had affected just about everyone.
She would never forget that moment in the CIC when Lee reported that Starbuck’s ship was in pieces. His voice was defeated and distraught. She had also heard from Chief that it had taken over an hour to get him out of his Viper when he landed.
Even before that day, things were not that great between them. They were fighting over trivial things because they were both working so hard. There were many times when he came back from a CAP right when she was reporting to the CIC. The “date night” that they were going to set aside each week was quickly forgotten. She found that she no longer had a marriage with Lee but a co-existence. It hurt every time she saw Helo and Sharon sharing a look or Kara and Sam holding hands. Not that she was into public displays of affection, but she had wished that Lee would be a bit more demonstrative with his feelings. She felt like she was missing out on something, felt him pulling away. The distance became too much to bear in the end.
Even though she had not gone to New Caprica, Dualla hated what Gaius Baltar had done there, had done to what was left of the human race. She had become a colonial fleet officer because she wanted to help serve and protect the colonies, to prove to her family and friends that she could make a life for herself on her own and that a Sagittaron could have a successful career in the military. As far as she was concerned, Baltar was a traitor to the human race - he had spent all that time on a Cylon basestar after the escape from New Caprica. The gods only knew how many secrets he shared with the Cylons. She knew she wasn’t alone in wishing that Chief Tyrol and his crew had just left him on the algae planet to perish.
When she found out that Lee - her own husband - was not only protecting Baltar’s lawyer but was choosing to help defend the traitor, she felt that he had truly lost his mind. When he defended his actions to her and accused her of not really understanding him, the blinds came crashing down and she understood why she fell in love with him in the first place and why she could no longer be with him.
She realized that Lee hid behind that façade of ethics and principles so he would not have to confront the truth, feel the pain. He chose to defend Baltar, to protect some ideal of justice than deal with mourning Kara and being faced with her death every time he boarded a Viper. He had chosen her over Kara after they had fled the algae planet because he claimed to want to save their marriage rather than take the risk to be with the woman he loved. She finally understood that he had married her because he was in pain over Kara and Sam’s marriage. Sure, he had grown to respect and love her - but he was never really in love with her. Not the way she used to be in love with him. He was no longer the man she thought he was because he never was that man to begin with, not really.
Dualla couldn’t have told Lee all this - not with Kara’s loss having been fresh in his mind. But she wouldn’t stay with him out of pity. She couldn’t do that to him or herself and a part of her knew he would understand this. She finally found herself able to sleep at night once she left him. While this thought had depressed her at first, she began to feel more and more herself again - the self she was before she married Lee.
She was surprised to find that she felt both relief and fear…relief that Kara was not actually dead and fear that her return meant something altogether different. Could she be a Cylon? She thought about Lee and wondered what was going through his mind at the moment aside from fending off attacking Raiders. She wondered what would happen now that Starbuck - or someone who sounded an awful lot like her - was back in Lee’s life…back in the Fleet. Would she really be able to lead them to Earth at last?
Dualla blinked, shook her head alert and refocused on her work as she recommenced communicating with Viper and Raptor pilots as well as responding to distress calls from other ships. So far, the Vipers were keeping the Cylons at bay but was most worrisome was the fact that four basestars were closing in on them.
Meanwhile, Helo was helping to get the FTL drive back online and saw that Adama still looked shaken. “Admiral, we have no choice but to wait until we can get through this attack to confirm her identity. Once we have her - once we have Starbuck back on the ship, we can figure out what to do next.”
Adama looked up at Helo. “You’re right, Captain.”
Adama cleared his throat. “What is the status of the FTL drive?”
“We should be online in fifteen, no ten minutes.”
Dualla chimed in. “Sir, I’ll get a status report on FTL drives from the rest of the Fleet.”
“If we can hold the Cylon attacks for just ten more minutes,” said Adama. “We just may be able to jump away to safety and regroup. I still don’t understand how they found us, and how they were able to affect our power systems.”
Dualla checked her displays and saw no evidence anywhere that their power systems had been tampered with from an external source. “The power failure happened within each ship simultaneously. I don’t see any way the Cylons could have done all this externally.”
“Are you implying that this was an inside job?”
“Well, if they had the ability to do this all along, why haven’t they used this against us before?” Dualla and Adama shared a concerned look, because they had the same thought. Was there another traitor in their midst?
Colonel Tigh was unusually quiet throughout this exchange as he was examining the DRADIS scan. He was listening to every word but didn’t let on that he was. “Colonel, what do you have to say? I almost forgot you were here, you haven’t said a word.”
Good news: I have about 20 pages of this fic written in rough, very rough form. Bad news: I will be vacationing out of the country for the next two weeks (with probably no computer access) starting tomorrow so I won't be able to post anything new until the end of the month. (But I promise to bring a notebook with me to keep writing.) I am amazed at how much I'm enjoying writing this, but want to make sure I'm going in an okay direction. And if anyone knows of a good beta or would be interested in beta-ing my fic, please let me know.
The title will be explained in a later chapter but you could probably understand to what it's referring.
"The Thirteenth" - Chapter One
“I’ve been to Earth. I know where it is. And I’m going to take us there.”
The CIC grew so quiet you could only hear the whirr of the computers and the beeps of the DRADIS contacts that were multiplying by the second. No one could speak out of both shock and the desire to hear every word that was being spoken. Dualla glanced at Gaeta, who looked as stunned as she felt. She then looked at Adama, who was obviously shaken.
The profound silence was broken up by Starbuck’s voice. “And it looks like I came back just in time. We have two incoming Raiders!”
Gaeta went back to reporting DRADIS contacts while Adama turned to Dualla. “Lieutenant, let me speak directly.”
“Yes, sir.” Dualla patched in the Admiral’s line. “You’re now connected.”
Adama picked up his radio receiver. “Apollo, this is Galactica Actual. Can you confirm that she…do you have a visual on Starbuck?” His voice cracked slightly on her name. Still, there was radio silence. “Lee, please respond.”
They heard that voice again and realized it wasn’t a hallucination they were all sharing. “Galactica, this is Starbuck. Let’s survive this attack first and I’ll explain everything later.” The calm voice then turned ferocious. “Come on, Apollo, wake the frak up or you're dead.”
Dualla watched Adama put his receiver down slowly in disbelief, not making eye contact with anyone. She knew how much Starbuck’s loss had affected him, had affected just about everyone.
She would never forget that moment in the CIC when Lee reported that Starbuck’s ship was in pieces. His voice was defeated and distraught. She had also heard from Chief that it had taken over an hour to get him out of his Viper when he landed.
Even before that day, things were not that great between them. They were fighting over trivial things because they were both working so hard. There were many times when he came back from a CAP right when she was reporting to the CIC. The “date night” that they were going to set aside each week was quickly forgotten. She found that she no longer had a marriage with Lee but a co-existence. It hurt every time she saw Helo and Sharon sharing a look or Kara and Sam holding hands. Not that she was into public displays of affection, but she had wished that Lee would be a bit more demonstrative with his feelings. She felt like she was missing out on something, felt him pulling away. The distance became too much to bear in the end.
Even though she had not gone to New Caprica, Dualla hated what Gaius Baltar had done there, had done to what was left of the human race. She had become a colonial fleet officer because she wanted to help serve and protect the colonies, to prove to her family and friends that she could make a life for herself on her own and that a Sagittaron could have a successful career in the military. As far as she was concerned, Baltar was a traitor to the human race - he had spent all that time on a Cylon basestar after the escape from New Caprica. The gods only knew how many secrets he shared with the Cylons. She knew she wasn’t alone in wishing that Chief Tyrol and his crew had just left him on the algae planet to perish.
When she found out that Lee - her own husband - was not only protecting Baltar’s lawyer but was choosing to help defend the traitor, she felt that he had truly lost his mind. When he defended his actions to her and accused her of not really understanding him, the blinds came crashing down and she understood why she fell in love with him in the first place and why she could no longer be with him.
She realized that Lee hid behind that façade of ethics and principles so he would not have to confront the truth, feel the pain. He chose to defend Baltar, to protect some ideal of justice than deal with mourning Kara and being faced with her death every time he boarded a Viper. He had chosen her over Kara after they had fled the algae planet because he claimed to want to save their marriage rather than take the risk to be with the woman he loved. She finally understood that he had married her because he was in pain over Kara and Sam’s marriage. Sure, he had grown to respect and love her - but he was never really in love with her. Not the way she used to be in love with him. He was no longer the man she thought he was because he never was that man to begin with, not really.
Dualla couldn’t have told Lee all this - not with Kara’s loss having been fresh in his mind. But she wouldn’t stay with him out of pity. She couldn’t do that to him or herself and a part of her knew he would understand this. She finally found herself able to sleep at night once she left him. While this thought had depressed her at first, she began to feel more and more herself again - the self she was before she married Lee.
She was surprised to find that she felt both relief and fear…relief that Kara was not actually dead and fear that her return meant something altogether different. Could she be a Cylon? She thought about Lee and wondered what was going through his mind at the moment aside from fending off attacking Raiders. She wondered what would happen now that Starbuck - or someone who sounded an awful lot like her - was back in Lee’s life…back in the Fleet. Would she really be able to lead them to Earth at last?
Dualla blinked, shook her head alert and refocused on her work as she recommenced communicating with Viper and Raptor pilots as well as responding to distress calls from other ships. So far, the Vipers were keeping the Cylons at bay but was most worrisome was the fact that four basestars were closing in on them.
Meanwhile, Helo was helping to get the FTL drive back online and saw that Adama still looked shaken. “Admiral, we have no choice but to wait until we can get through this attack to confirm her identity. Once we have her - once we have Starbuck back on the ship, we can figure out what to do next.”
Adama looked up at Helo. “You’re right, Captain.”
Adama cleared his throat. “What is the status of the FTL drive?”
“We should be online in fifteen, no ten minutes.”
Dualla chimed in. “Sir, I’ll get a status report on FTL drives from the rest of the Fleet.”
“If we can hold the Cylon attacks for just ten more minutes,” said Adama. “We just may be able to jump away to safety and regroup. I still don’t understand how they found us, and how they were able to affect our power systems.”
Dualla checked her displays and saw no evidence anywhere that their power systems had been tampered with from an external source. “The power failure happened within each ship simultaneously. I don’t see any way the Cylons could have done all this externally.”
“Are you implying that this was an inside job?”
“Well, if they had the ability to do this all along, why haven’t they used this against us before?” Dualla and Adama shared a concerned look, because they had the same thought. Was there another traitor in their midst?
Colonel Tigh was unusually quiet throughout this exchange as he was examining the DRADIS scan. He was listening to every word but didn’t let on that he was. “Colonel, what do you have to say? I almost forgot you were here, you haven’t said a word.”